Dual maintenance/transportable objects

Question

Hello,
We're looking at transport strategy. We will have the same concept of a parallel landscape on DEV and QUAL systems to avoid any freeze during upgrade, as described in thread  'dual maintenance'.
- does the dual maintenance means 100% of changes applied in DS1 has to be 'manually applied to DSA? If not which one can be transported from 46C to ERP Unicode and which one need to be applied manually?
- how did everyone convert and maintain their ABAP? Some 7.0 functions are not available in 46C and vice-versa. Was the Unicode-enabling code changes applied in DS1 then transported to DSA? Did anyone use utility upload/dowload and if so, which case?
- how about programs created in DS1 after the DSA creation/upgrade. At that stage they are still non-Unicode? Was it converted then transported to DSA?
Thanks and regards,
Terry

Answer 1

Try to minimize configuration as much as possible during the upgrade project, so the amount of dual-config shouldn't be that great. Unicode-enabling syntax changes, in your case, will have to be made in the DSA system since you are on 4.6 and I don't think UCCHECK is available in 4.6.  Unless you want to scan your own programs for the common syntax problems.  We actually used UCCHECK and corrected some programs in our legacy DEV system before doing the system copy/upgrade so that we did not have to do the re-work, but this was possible because we are on 4.7.
I would recommend creating any new programs manually in DSA, and in DSA turn on the unicode checks active flag.  Try to freeze new development as much as possible during the upgrade to avoid this double-work, and to focus your resources on the critical upgrade project.
(Sorry for the multiple posts, something in the language was blocking the complete post)